


I long to be near you, but every road leads to an end

by coincidental



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, End of the World, Found Family, Minor Mentions of Violence, Multi, Post-Apocalypse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coincidental/pseuds/coincidental
Summary: What is that song you sing for the deadSentimentality for the departed is something he can no longer afford. Everyone left has cried their fair share of tears. What is left is what is left and they must all simply make the best of what they can. Caleb tries and having Nott with him staves off the loneliness. He rarely thinks on his family any more, or on his once companions, on Astrid and Eodwulf. Dwelling on the lack of them, on their fate, does him no good, just deepens the ache in his chest. Grief has no place in a world that demands so much even to survive; you must become numb to it.What's left when the world has ended and the dust has settled? Only the quiet.Caleb and Nott search for answers. Molly and Yasha search for more. Beau, Fjord and Jester search for home. Maybe all of those things are the same place and people.
Relationships: Fjord & Beauregard Lionett, Fjord & Jester Lavorre, Fjord/Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre & Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Nott & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 13
Kudos: 32





	I long to be near you, but every road leads to an end

**Author's Note:**

> I recognise with the current climate, this fic might not be for everybody, but it is something I've been picking at for months, more than a year even. I've found it therapeutic to come back to. 
> 
> The rating acknowledges later content as opposed to the first chapter.
> 
> I hope you like this quiet thing.
> 
> x

The motorway stretches on, abandoned cars scattered along it like the carapaces of oversized metal beetles. In the rain, distant vehicles have become nothing more than hazy dark shapes in the dim light. 

Caleb hitches up his collar a little, adjusting it to fend off the chill, and peers into the grimy window of yet another vehicle to check for bodies. Blessedly, he finds none, just empty front seats. Glancing about himself and finding nobody present, he tries the door handle. To his utmost surprise, the door opens with that hollow sort of sound, a metal click and empty shifting of air. It echoes in the quiet and Caleb is grateful for the rain that muffles it; he’d rather not have company. 

Settling into the car he clambers over into the back seat, nudging a child’s stuffed toy onto the floor and sprawling his legs out. He pushes up his sleeve and folds over the edge of a glove to look at his watch, then glances out of the window to look up at the sky. Three o’clock. Probably.

Almost absentmindedly he rubs at a twist of copper wire around his thumb, feeling the heat build and flare beyond that which the friction stirs up. He sends a message out on the familiar hum of warm magic that gathers at his fingertips. “Nott, I am in a black Alhambra around three miles from where we parted. How are you doing? You can reply to this message.”

Twisting in the seat, he peers over into the back of the car. The expansive boot space is loaded with bags and cases of all sorts. Though the interior of the vehicle is musty, it doesn’t smell bad, so he assumes there’s no fresh food. If the space was more clear though, it might be good to sleep in, and he and Nott could do with somewhere warmer to sleep for a night. 

The wet weather has been growing more frequent and the temperature dropping night by night. The trees are turning brown and yellow and Caleb is concerned that winter is going to hit them hard and they will find themselves without a proper base to hunker down and wait out the coldest months. Travelling much during them will be too risky, and they’ll need a built-up food store more than ever. It’s lucky neither of them needs much.

Nott’s response comes back, crackly and quiet while he’s hanging over the seatback to try to peer into some of the backs in the car boot. “Hi Caleb, I caught a rabbit and two squirrels, I’ll come find you. Probably be around two hours, maybe better.” 

Caleb hums a vaguely affirmative response, though he knows his goblin friend cannot hear it. Reluctantly, he clambers from the car and pads around to open the boot. Surveying the contents beneath the small cover that the uplifted door offers, he puts his hands on his hips and sighs before embarking upon emptying the space of bags and digging through their contents. 

A while later, sweating a little beneath his coat despite the chill in the air, the road beside him is littered with discarded bags full of useless belongings of the once owners of the vehicle. The things Caleb has discarded are largely sentimental or clothing that will fit neither he nor Nott. He has saved a small collection to try on, warm layers and some children’s clothes he thinks his smaller companion might make use of. 

Sentimentality for the departed is something he can no longer afford. Everyone left has cried their fair share of tears. What is left is what is left and they must all simply make the best of what they can. Caleb tries and having Nott with him staves off the loneliness. He rarely thinks on his family any more, or on his once companions, on Astrid and Eodwulf. Dwelling on the lack of them, on their fate, does him no good, just deepens the ache in his chest. Grief has no place in a world that demands so much even to survive; you must become numb to it. 

With the space cleared in the back of the car, Caleb can see where the seats fold down flat into the floor and indeed how the middle row will also lie flat. He crawls in to fold them down too, then begins to lay out the supplies he found for the night: a stash of canned and dried foods, sleeping bags and some battered camping utensils.

Despite his best efforts, the small gas camping ring for heating food will not ignite. He considers casting a flame himself to spur it on, but thinks perhaps, the potential for an explosion or singed eyebrows is not wise so he tosses it aside. He salvages what items he thinks might burn cleanly from his discard pile, bundling them up inside the vehicle where they won’t get damp. 

The horizon is not visible for the rain that keeps falling, heavier now than before. It drums on the metal roof of the car and the sound is oddly soothing. Staring down the motorway the way he had come, he settles cross-legged to await Nott’s return.

* * *

Fjord squints in the rain and turns Shelby, the horse tossing her head a little at his tug of the reins. She obeys after a moment, making her way up the familiar track towards the farm. The ground underfoot is growing muddier daily with the constant onslaught of worsening weather, the mare’s hooves sinking up to her fetlocks in it with each squelching step, and Fjord squints through the rain from beneath the edge of the hood tugged low on his forehead. 

Not far off, there’s a dim glow in the windows of the farmhouse, half-hidden behind drawn curtains. One of them twitches. This far off, it’s hard to distinguish who the dark shape might be, but Fjord suspects it’s Beau. For all her blase attitude, she gets anxious when he takes a while to come back. He knows it’s been a long one this time, the sky growing gloomy from more than the rain, early dark drawing in. 

He clicks his tongue a little, making a low, soft sound of encouragement and nudging his feet into Shelby’s sides to urge her forward. She moves reluctantly up the muddy track and Fjord does not blame her for that reluctance, but keeps them both moving for the sake of the warm dry indoors that waits for them both. 

Inside the house, Beau peers from between the curtains out into the rain. Jester is curled up in an armchair by the dark hearth, a camping lantern beside her enabling her to sketch, her book propped on her knee, toes in thick socks barely peeking from beneath her and tail curled into the warm spot between her thigh and the arm of the chair. She chews her lip in quiet concentration and hums idly to herself as her pencil moves across the paper in rhythmic quiet scratches. 

Beau glances back over at her. “Think I can see him on the road, looks like him and Shelb. Should get that fire lit.” 

Jester looks up from her sketching and Beau can make out a smudge of dark lead on her cheek. “Hmm?” 

Beau half-smiles, worrying at a thumb hole she’s made in the sleeve of her hoodie. “Earth to Jes,” she teases idly, shifting from the window seat. “Fjord’s almost back, he’ll be soaked through.” Jester blinks and brightens a little, unfolding from her seat and moving into action. 

It’s the work of quick practice to get the fire set and lit. Beau fetches in more armfuls of logs from the storage bin out the back of the house, noting the depleted levels - they need to replenish the store, but that means some sweat and probably tears to take a tree down, hours of work if they want a good one, then a good chunk of the day to get it back. She doesn’t relish the thought of it. 

Hurrying back in from the eerie rainy twilight, she deposits the new stack of logs by the fire so they can dry out and brushes off her front and tracksuit. Jester is kneeling down, prodding the wood into a better position with cautious fingers. 

“Do you think he found anything good?” she asks, settling back on her heels. “I sooo hope he found me some new things, that book or some pencils.” Beau flops onto the worn sofa, her feet pointed towards the fire, bare and cold, a little damp from her brief wander out of doors to fetch the wood. 

“I just hope he found some good tins, something  _ interesting _ .” 

“Mmmmm, I doubt it. Are you saying you don’t like my cooking,  _ Beau _ ?” Jester’s tone is teasing and Beau snorts a little. 

“I just hate goddamn beans and sweetcorn. It’s a weird combination.” 

“Hate beans and sweetcorn? Now, who would say such a thing.” Fjord steps through the front door and closes it behind him with a succinct click, dripping onto the doormat in the front hall. He toes off his mud-laden boots and pads through in his damp socks into the main room, met with Jester’s bubbling laugh and Beau’s slanting half-smile. 

He plants his boots down in front of the fire to dry and peels off his socks to lay next to them. Next to go are his coat and sweatshirt. Sprawling into the sofa beside Beau, he plants a bulky hiking rucksack between them and gestures generously when she immediately moves to start loosening the ties and opening it up.

“No, don’t worry about waiting a moment. Please, do be my guest, Beauregard, dive right on in.” 

She glances up from her mission with a blue, narrow-eyed stare. Fjord’s eyes crinkle as he laughs. From the floor, Jester pipes up. 

“Find what he brought me!” she begs, her soft cheeks dimpling and hands clasping together in delighted anticipation. 

“Who says I got you anything?” Fjord protests with a raised brow.

Jester’s moue of disappointment startles a laugh from Fjord, fine lines crinkling by his eyes. 

“I am teasin’ you Jes, don’t go making that face at me.” From beside him, Beau makes a triumphant noise, brandishing a tin of hot dogs wildly. 

“Fuckin’  _ yes _ ,” she crows, diving back in to fish out several more tins of hot dogs and a couple of meatballs and pasta in tomato sauce. “I love you,” she declares, clutching them to her in a clunking armful. 

“I love you too?” Fjord returns, bemused, a note of genuine affection lingering beneath it. 

“Not you, dumbass,” she snorts, getting to her feet and heading towards the kitchen with her precious cargo in her arms. “Obviously I was talking to the hot dogs,” she calls from the adjoining room. There are clattering sounds that indicate she’s stashing the tins in the cupboards, or at least… Fjord hopes that’s what she’s up to. 

Jester takes the opportunity of Beau vacating the sofa to plant herself there and begin to dig into the rucksack. Fjord watches her with a fond smile, watching the expressions flickering across her face as she draws out various things they were in need of, none of which are things she herself wants. Reaching the bottom of the rucksack, she looks up from it with a frown, confusion drawing her brows together. 

“There is nothing, Fjord. This is not funny.” She sounds somewhere between irritation and anger, the playful inflection normally present in her sing-song voice noticeably absent and somewhat flat. Fjord takes for granted, he knows, the firecracker of her personality and the light Jester brings on a dark day, so he cannot stand to hear her so flat even for a short while. He reaches to take the rucksack from her and unbuckles the front compartments, digging from them two tins of pencils, one a watercolour set, a few writing pens of different colours, a brand new packet of HB pencils along with a new sharpener and some new rubbers. He presents them in open hands, lips twitching up in a smile. 

“Here, hey, ‘course I got you things, soon as I saw some I put ‘em in.” 

Jester’s smile is radiant and her eyes are suspiciously wet. She knocks the rucksack to the floor in her haste to dive in close and hug him. He drops the things to the sofa cushions behind her, rubbing her back and petting her hair a little. Her horns nearly catch him in the face and he splutters a laugh, angling his head to avoid them.

“Okay, easy, careful huh?” She sniffles into his neck and curls up against him, so he doesn’t let her go. In the kitchen, they can distantly hear the clattering of Beau busying herself, probably rearranging tins. 

With Jester warm and solid at his side, the fire warming the room slowly and his body reluctantly losing its hold on the damp cold that he’s felt suffused with all day, Fjord allows the tense muscles in him to relax. Jester feels it, when he does, feels him soften beside her and nuzzles absently, wiping her tears on his shoulder. 

“You were gone a long time, today,” she whispers. Fjord’s arms around her tighten briefly and he makes a sound of agreement that she feels more as a vibrating rumble than she hears it. “Beau worries,” she adds.  _ And I worry _ , she does not say, but she thinks Fjord knows.

“I know.” Fjord does not elaborate, just breathes in deeply and exhales slowly, closing his eyes. 

* * *

By the time Nott returns, it’s dark out. Caleb is hunkered down with his back to the open car boot, defensively angled so he can see any approaching figures, on high alert. Through the pitch shadows of stationary vehicles, he spies the small form scurrying towards him apace. He makes a halfhearted prod at the quietly flickering fire the vehicle is sheltering a little from the wind, the open boot door of the car serving as some protection against the drizzle. 

The flare of heat and light prodding the fire provokes is timely enough to light up Nott’s face as she approaches, her green features muddy and golden eyes luminous, flaring brightly like a cat’s as the light hits them. 

Strung around her on a macabre makeshift strap are the limp, damp furred bodies of a small plump rabbit and two rangy but well-sized squirrels. It will be enough. 

She slings off the rope they are attached to and grins at him, brandishing them victoriously.    
“How’s that for dinner,” she crows, her eyes crinkling in a strange sort of delight. Caleb finds a smile crossing his lips for the first time since that morning and something in him settles.

A while later, hunched down together, their sides brushing, Caleb ventures to speak.    
“We are heading onward tomorrow.” Beside him, Nott sucks meat grease from her fingers - the squirrel proved rangy but, as always, edible.    
“You think we’re gonna find anything?” Caleb shrugs a little and shrinks into his coat further at a cruel wind that whips around the protective structure of the car and lashes coldly across the back of his neck. He considers his answer, turns the lie over on his tongue. It tastes ashy. 

“No, I think we will find nothing but-”   
“But you still want to go and look?” Caleb finds himself grateful for not having to finish the foolishness of his own sentence.    
“I think Astrid and Wulf will be… gone, but that is not to say there is no merit in going there. I will feel… at ease, I think, and I will be able to research. I hope the libraries are intact there.” Nott seems, as ever she does when the subject of research comes up, amiable if uninterested.   
“You’re very smart, I trust you, if you think we should go and research, then we can go and research.” Her voice is smaller when she speaks up again, the fire sputtering low and the night swallowing up sound, “Do you think we’ll find anything to help?” 

Caleb’s lack of answer speaks volumes and he quietly stokes the fire.    
“Ah, maybe.” His voice is hollow and quiet. Nott leans her head against him and he sighs. “Sleep, Nottchen, I’ll wake you for a shift in a little while.”

* * *

Astride the bike, they devour the miles of slowly degrading tarmac and concrete, zip through the old roadblocks, abandoned vehicles clustered tight and looming on all sides. Mollymauk holds his breath when they get surrounded like that, his arms snug around Yasha’s waist. She never protests. 

They lost the coast from one town to the next, whitewashed walls and slate roofs dwindling in their mirrors, the smell of the sea air lost. Molly missed the pier the moment they left it, the phantom echo of the arcade machines in his ears. 

The loss of people still feels confusing,  _ empty _ in a way he cannot qualify with words. He expects crowds still, clusters of friends, confusing gaggles of family overflowing from cars and restaurant booths. Every space has the echo of normality still, like if he blinks they’ll be back any moment.

London put the fear in him and Yasha both. 

They’d tried, is the thing. The circular road was a ghost town and the suburbs loomed with yawning empty windows and smashed open doorways. The evidence of the previous looting was plain… it hadn’t been so bad, close to the coast, but cities always seemed closer to that teetering line of civil unrest and out and out violence. It didn’t surprise them to see it. 

Making their way in, they stopped as infrequently as they could, opening up the laminated maps they’d taken and traced the roads and junctions with nervous precision. The closer to the centre they got, the bleaker it seemed. 

The buildings were concrete behemoths of grey and glass and already they showed signs of disrepair, the glass smudged and filthy. The normality of office chairs and meeting rooms peered out from the filthy windows, taunting Molly from behind the visor of his helmet. Sometimes he thought he saw movement, but invariably found it was only their reflection that raced them down the quiet streets, echoed back from once glossy storefronts, coffee shops and office buildings. 

Neither of them knew what they hoped to find, but they stopped on Tower Bridge to look down for a moment over the snaking green grey depths of the Thames. The river curved towards the horizon, birds dipping down over the water. The city rang back its silence like some awful opposite of a bell, reverberating, out out out. 

Molly felt himself rebel against the silence involuntarily, like if he could shout loud enough, the pressure of it might ebb away. He placed his hands on the stone balustrade and howled a bellowing cracking something out down the river. It echoed. The silence crowded back in inevitably and Yasha placed a hand on his back, distant through the leather jacket. 

“There is nobody left we want to hear us,” she told him then, her voice soft and a little rough from disuse. Mollymauk nodded and followed her lead in fitting his helmet back on and climbing behind her solid form on the bike. 

North of the river, weaving through the stationary vehicles, they passed the Tower buildings, old stone bracketed by the silent modern city. On the crenelations, unwieldy makeshift pikes stuck up. 

They had almost passed by, Molly craning his head back to look, before he realised that the gaping mouths of rotting skulls stared back. He swallowed down the rolling swell of sickness and urged Yasha on faster. In her mirror, she spied movement on those battlements before they zipped around a corner and out of sight.

They made their way out of the city fast as they could and hunkered down in a house north of the city. They hoped to find… someone, something, worth stopping for, but that silence pervaded, and where there was not silence, there seemed only to be something so twisted, it wasn’t worth engaging. 

The house was middling size, end of terrace, a fenced-in overgrown back garden and a small gated front one that resembled more a bush. It gave enough cover to hide the bike, an old weather faded blue tarpaulin doing the rest. 

The place had smelt of disuse, dust and cold damp, but it served well enough. Vacuum storage bags in an airing cupboard yielded spare pillows and duvets untouched, still smelling faintly of fabric softener and fresh air, enough to make their sleep there comfortable if not restful. 

Growing up as they had for so many formative years in Brighton’s bustling streets, the idea of silence was still hard to get used to and did not make for restful sleep, rather the tossing and turning doze of people waiting for the sounds of traffic, drunken revellers and the rhythmic tossing regularity of the sea crashing in.

They rise in the house that had belonged to strangers and now belongs to nobody at all. 

Yasha appears through the back door from the overgrown back garden, tossing a small rounded thing towards Molly. Startled, his hands jerk up to catch, thoughtless instinct. He opens his cupped palms to find a small and only slightly sorry for itself looking apple. Yasha’s smile in his direction is slow and small.    
“It may be a little bitter, but it seems sad to waste it.” His agreement is with the dig of sharp teeth into the small fruit. Yasha’s right, it is a little bitter, but it’s fresh, sharp, real. 

With a small breakfast of apples, they exit the house with a handful of supplies scavenged and a dubious lack of positivity despite a crisply bright morning, blue sky. Molly guesses it is around late September, perhaps October now, but he has not kept track of the days properly, one merging indistinctly into the next with no guiding structure of work or social calendar. 

Their travel takes them out of the last of the city and along a motorway, fields bracketing them in. It feels almost serene to weave down the long road with blue above them and green and yellow fields blurring past them. They cling to that feeling, take a break on the crest of a hill, looking over the world that seems wholly empty but for them, sipping from a shared water bottle and eating protein bars. 

Tired with driving, at length Yasha makes her way off the broad endless line of the motorway and circles following signs for an abandoned service station in a hope for petrol, food and maybe shelter.

* * *

Caleb wakes to a sound that is both familiar and unfamiliar at once. It takes him a moment to place it and when he does, he sits bolt upright. The undeniable approaching hum of an engine, a rough rattling rumble, is so foreign in the silence of Caleb’s new life it sets his heart to racing. It is a strange thing to force it to settle, to remind himself that it is  _ nothing dangerous _ . 

Though, and he glances to the spot by his side where Nott miraculously still sleeps, they have not come across someone in so long, perhaps being afraid is right.

For a moment, he is frozen. He daren’t get to his feet and find the early morning sunshine and see who is out there. Who they might be, someone else, a person in this whole wide empty, silent world that is neither he nor Nott seems such an impossible thing. The sound draws closer and Caleb’s fingers twitch on the bedroll. 

The bike must be approaching now, closer, closer. The sound is so loud Caleb is trembling with it. 

He scrambles to his feet in a rush, bolting for the door of the service station and shoving it open. His own alarm spells jangle merrily in his ears as he tumbles into the brightness of midday sun - they must have slept longer than they intended - and looks frantically for the bike. 

It careens past him at a comfortable pace, a bulky dusty dark thing, metal and humming power, two figures astride it.  _ Two.  _ Two more people in the world seems too many and not enough all at once. 

Caleb has not raised his voice in months, he is sure, and it comes out cracked, unused to disturbing the world with its volume.    
“Come back! Wait!” The bike slows and halts and the helmeted rider on the back twists to look in his direction. Something about the dark visor makes them seem alien, lacking in humanity. They twist back to the driver and link their arms around them and the bike’s engine revs. Caleb’s heart is in his throat. “Don’t leave, come back!” He calls out again, heart in his throat in a copper tasting fear that the last of the living might leave him in their dust. 

The bike moves forward a little and turns a tight awkward arc on the road to come back towards him. He exhales in a heavy rush and puts a hand over his mouth. They’re coming back. 

His whole body reacts in a violent jerk to twist around at a clatter of sound, his shoulder dropping from their tense bracketing of his ears in the moment between breaths as he sees a squinting, suspicious and sleep rumpled Nott emerge from the service station. It’s hard to look away, lest the strangers vanish like a fever dream. 

Part of him wouldn’t be surprised if they did. The emptiness of the world has played tricks on him before, given him glimpses of dangers not truly there yes, but worse are the people he recognises. He’s seen friends at the end of deserted streets that have vanished in the moment he took to alert Nott, and sometimes, worse still, he’s seen family, glimpsed his mother, a hand outstretched towards him beneath the shifting dappled shade of a tree, his father beckoning from the depths of a shadowed alley as they pass it. They are so long dead now, long before the whole world went to shit. It always hurts, never mind that he knows it to be the lonely imaginings of his own mind, the conjurings of a grieving heart. 

The shorter of the pair takes a couple of steps towards them, and something about the movement is evenly controlled, the deliberately placed steps of a dancer or a predator - Caleb cannot place which. They stop when the taller figure reaches to grasp a leather-clad shoulder. The touch is gentle, but firm, fingers pressing a wrinkle into the leather. 

One of them speaks, and through the helmets, it is honestly hard to say which, the tone lifting a little in a question, the sound muffled and barely comprehensible. After a beat, Caleb’s rapidly moving thoughts slow enough to process. 

“We, ah, are not sick, or armed... currently.” He glances back to Nott, who is, in fact, wielding her compound bow with a look of wary distrust. He gestures in exasperation for her to lower it. “It’s okay, put it down, I think we can be cordial here.” Nott goes to interrupt, her mouth opening with a glimpse of jagged teeth, her luminous eyes narrowed. “Bitte,” he adds, an afterthought. 

Though mistrust is written in every tense line of her body, Nott places the weapon slowly, and with care, on the ground, lifting her hands as she straightens to show she holds naught else. Caleb looks back to the strangers in time to see the taller of the two tugging off the helmet. 

It reveals pale features, a strong jaw scuffed with dirt or maybe bruises and mismatched eyes dark-rimmed and tired, her lips pressed into a thin line as the tall woman considers him slowly. - Caleb is sure he looks much the same these days, imagines his own features have the same lean taut hunger to them, nothing spare, his expression likely holds the same tired caution too, but he doesn’t remember the last time he looked in a mirror, is not sure he would want to if he could.

Caleb is so distracted, so caught up in this living, breathing  _ person _ , that he almost misses her companion also removing their helmet. 

It takes them a moment and it is soon clear why, the helmet a comically large one to accommodate neatly curved horns that spiral around the shape of the skull, set atop a mess of deep purple curls. Caleb meets garnet bright eyes that regard him levelly from the midst of gold smudged lilac skin and a mauve mouth curves in a dagger-sharp smile. As it widens, it shows teeth sharper than Caleb is quite used to. The tiefling, heritage plain to see, feels like the most alive thing Caleb has seen in months. 

“I think it’ll be okay if I shake his hand, reckon I’d win in a fight.” The tiefling’s voice is smooth as honey, rich and warm, lilting pleasantly with an accent Caleb cannot quite place. The tiefling pats the woman’s hand and shrugs it from their shoulder, taking a few idle steps towards Caleb, tugging off one glove, finger by finger. It reveals an elegant hand, the same lilac tone as the rest of them, an inked snake’s head resting atop it, vanishing beneath the worn cuff of the leather jacket. The stranger extends it, and a small golden ring winks in the early morning light from the little finger. Caleb reaches out his own hand to clasp it, intently aware of the dirt beneath his nails and embedded in his skin.

At the press of a warm palm to his, some kind of breath Caleb is holding comes out in a rush. The tiefling shakes his hand once, firmly, not letting go as they smile once more. It seems less predatory than before, kinder. “I’m Mollymauk, Molly to my friends, and I think we are going to be friends, don’t you?” The tiefling jerks their head back towards the woman, whose arms are now defensively folded across her chest. “That’s Yasha, she’s a doll, don’t let her fool you with that frown.” Caleb is drawn to look at her a moment when she speaks up;   
“If he is being rude about me, feel free to assume it is probably a joke.”   
“Ah, not rude, I promise,” Caleb ventures. Mollymauk laughs a short throaty chuckle that sends a shiver down Caleb’s spine, snapping his eyes back to meet red ones that are narrowed in what Caleb parses as amusement. The tiefling still holds his hand. “I am… Caleb Widogast and my smaller friend is Nott. It is good to meet you.”

Mollymauk’s eyes light up in a softly pleasing sort of way and it leaves Caleb’s belly twisting in a way nothing to do with fear or hunger for once.    
“Mr Caleb, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Molly finally drops Caleb’s hand, an aeon too late to be casual, leaving him oddly bereft. He tucks the empty hand nervously into the cradle of his other, rubbing his thumb firmly against his palm in a rhythmic press. “And you, my small green friend,” he calls across to Nott. From the corner of his eye, Caleb sees her wrinkle her nose but offer up a short cautious wave. 

“Is this where you live?” Yasha’s voice is measured and even, soft almost. She toys idly with the keys to the motorbike before tucking them into the pocket of her jacket as she moves to stand beside Mollymauk. He bumps his shoulder against her in a move that Caleb recognises as both familiar affection and comfort.    
“Ah. No. It is… just a stop on the way.”   
“A stop on the way to where if I may ask?” Mollymauk’s tone is vibrantly curious.

Caleb hesitates. It does not do well to simply share plans with strangers, but he aches for this contact, this familiar and reasonable sort of conversation that has nothing to do with where he and Nott intend to source their next meal, or where they might bunk down for the night.    
“Ah, uh, we are heading for Cambridge at present. I hope to find… something. Some friends, perhaps. Although, realistically, I think they...” Yasha makes a sympathetic noise as he trails off.    
“You think you will find nobody you know there,” she finishes, her steady tone gentle. When Caleb skims his eyes to her, he finds her answering expression soft and filled with quiet grief echoing his own. They have all lost people. He nods, curtly, his lips a thin line. 

  
“Where are you headed?” Caleb asks after a moment to compose his thoughts.   
“Ah, here, there and everywhere,” Mollymauk chimes in, in the midst of unzipping his bulky leather jacket to reveal a brightly patterned tee beneath. “We go where the road takes us!” Yasha rolls her eyes indelicately but smiles.   
“What he means is we do not know, we’re just… travelling, in search of others who are… unaffected. We were in Brighton.” Caleb’s brows raise.   
“That is a long way to have come with the roads as they are, did you travel through London?” Yasha nods with a wince and Mollymauk’s expression turns grim and sad.    
“Yes, we hoped to find people there, but the whole place is an empty shell. Those who remain seem… violent.” Mollymauk nods slowly along with her words, his angular features unhappy.

“Well.” Caleb clears his throat and sticks his hands into his pockets in a nervous gesture. “I cannot change those things, but I can offer you the little ah…. hospitality this fine service station has to offer.” He smiles then, a small halfway there expression that Mollymauk returns tenfold. “We do not have much in the way of food, but we can share a meal tonight as best we can. I know Nott and I would… enjoy the company. It has been a long time.”   
“Hasn’t it just,” Mollymauk agrees.

Nott heads back towards the service station door, Yasha following behind, her low soft-spoken tones odd when paired with Nott’s often more abrasive ones, but their chat seems idle, kind. Caleb, for his part, gestures towards the same door and Mollymauk takes the offer with lazy strides. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, I hope you'll let me know. Writing can be hard but I love to and your support makes that easier. 
> 
> x


End file.
